Consider a survey on trust conducted earlier this year for the AARP Bulletin. Not surprisingly, people said they trusted their nearest and dearest (spouses, friends, neighbors) the most, while such usual suspects as reporters, labor unions, CEOs and used-car salespeople were at or near the bottom.

But compared with people ages 50 and older, younger adults were significantly more likely to trust public officials (judges, the President, their member of Congress), labor unions and, oddly enough, their in-laws, while they were less likely than the older group to trust their bankers or their neighbors. 

Those findings parallel a 2011 Pew Research survey that asked people how much they trusted the information they got from various sources. In that study, young adults were significantly more likely than the general population to trust the Obama administration (61% versus 50%), federal agencies (53% versus 44%) and even Congress (45% versus 37%), though they were less likely to trust information from corporations (34% versus 41%).

Young adults also are more likely to trust what the federal government does. According to a January 2013 Pew Research survey, 35% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing all or most of the time; less than a quarter of all other age groups said so. And only 22% of 18- to 29-year-olds said the federal government posed a major threat to their personal rights and freedoms, the lowest level of any age group.

Sociologists, economists and other researchers care a lot about what they call “social trust” — the belief that people are by and large honest and can be relied on to carry out their obligations. As James S. Coleman argued as early as 1988, social trust is an essential component of social capital: Everything from simple markets to complex governmental structures works more smoothly and efficiently when people trust each other to do the right thing (or at least most people most of the time).

Older Americans are wary of changes to Medicare. Compared with younger people, they are more positive about the way the program operates, less apt to think that changes are needed and far less disposed towards Paul Ryan’s proposal to reshape Medicare.

Read the full analysis.

Overall, 82% of all American adults ages 18 and older say they use the internet or email, at least occasionally, and 67% do so on a typical day.

Read the full report.

More than three-quarters of young adults ages 25 to 34 who have moved back home with their families during the Great Recession and the troubled economic years that followed say they’re satisfied with their living arrangements and upbeat about their future finances.

Those arrangements have benefited their parents as well: almost half of boomerang children say they have paid rent and almost nine-in-ten have helped with household expenses.

One reason young adults who are living with their parents may be relatively upbeat about their situation is that this has become such a widespread phenomenon. Among adults ages 25 to 34, 61% say they have friends or family members who have moved back in with their parents over the past few years because of economic conditions. Furthermore, three-in-ten parents of adult children (29%) report that a child of theirs has moved back in with them in the past few years because of the economy.

While young adults living at home may be satisfied with their situations, nearly eight-in-ten say they don’t currently have enough money to lead the kind of life they want, compared with 55% of their same-aged peers who aren’t living with their parents. Even so, large majorities of both groups (77% versus 90%) say they either have enough money now to lead the kind of life they want or expect they will in the future.

These findings are based on a new Pew Research Center survey of 2,048 adults nationwide conducted Dec. 6-19, 2011, that explores the family dynamics and economics of multi-generational living at a time when the number of multi-generational family households in the country continues to rise.

Read the full report for these findings:

• Who are the boomerang kids and how widespread a phenomenon do they represent?
• How living at home affects outlook, relationships
• The rise of multi-generational households
• The economics of multi-generational living
• Financial connections across generations

Older adults have made dramatic gains relative to younger adults in their economic well being during the past quarter century, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from two key U.S. Census sources.

Trends in household wealth reveal the pattern most vividly. In 2009, the median net worth (all assets minus all debts) of households headed by an adult ages 65 or older was 42% more than that of their same-aged counterparts in 1984. By contrast, the net worth of a typical household headed by an adult under the age of 35 in 2009 was 68% less than that of their same-aged counterparts in 1984.

As a result of these divergent trends, in 2009 the typical household headed by the older adult had $170,494 in net worth, compared with just $3,662 for the typical household headed by the younger adult. People generally accumulate wealth as they age, so it is not unusual to find large age-based gaps on this measure. However, the current gap is unprecedented. In 1984, the age-based wealth gap had been 10:1. By 2009, it had ballooned to 47:1.

These age-based gaps widened significantly during the sour economy of recent years, but all key trends are several decades old, indicating that they are also linked to long-term demographic, social and economic changes that have affected different age groups in different ways. These changes include structural changes in the labor and housing markets; delayed marriage; delayed retirement; and the changing racial and ethnic composition of the population.

Read the full report for key findings on:

• Household wealth
• The income gap
• Poverty rates
• Employment trends
• Home ownership rates
• The impact of the recession

 Related study: Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics